By David Fleet
Editor
Ortonville — Local resident, Arnie Seelbinder recalls attending the one-room Mann School.
“The school was pretty rough a lot of fighters attended,” said Seelbinder, now 97 years old who started school in 1931 at 6-years-old.
“One of my classmates threw my hat down the outhouse hole, I never got it out of there. There were all ages of students in my class some were 16-years-old. They let them go at that point.”
Seelbinder was a student at one of the Ortonville area rural one-room schoolhouses. After the village was founded in 1848, the first school was started in 1860 in a building near the northeast corner of School and Cedar streets. In 1864 the first Ortonville School was constructed nearby and used for about five years. The structure was later sold and moved to a downtown business. Among the several area country schools was the Oakwood School, the Draper School and Brandon Center School.
The Mann School, where Seelbinder attended, stood at the corner of Honert and Saw Mill Lake roads and was one of several one-room schoolhouses in the area that served students before the advent of busing.
“Everyone had more attention in a one-room school,” said Seelbinder. “They tried to help the kids out if there were learning issues. When I left in the eighth grade I was the only one remaining my age and there was just one in the seventh grade behind me. All the rest were much younger.”
Seelbinder, recalls twins boys born in 1929 named Herbert and Hoover Allen in honor of the Depression President Herbert Hoover.
“I walked about two-miles to school and often carried firewood in to heat the building in the winter,” he said. “We all got along pretty well.”
After the Mann School closed in 1943, it sat empty for years rescued by the historical society and relocated to the Old Mill Museum campus in 1996.
Key in the growth of the Ortonville community was the consolidation of several country schools, like the Mann School in the 1940s.
The school district grew from about 325 students in 1938 to 2,225 when the new high school opened in September 1972. Today the district enrolls about 2,000 students.
“Our community’s culture is built by the people who live, work and visit here. It is also built by the many places we frequent,” said Matt JenkinsExecutive Director, Ortonville DDA.
“The walkable Downtown, the businesses we shop, the parks we enjoy, and the schools we grow up in. Just like the recent opening of the 1998 Harvey Swanson time capsule, our schools play a significant role in capturing our communities history while helping to build each generation of Ortonville families.”